Sound and Fury
by stereolights
Summary: When God invented thunderstorms, he made Lucifer their patron angel. As usual, Gabriel was the first sibling he shared the news with.


**A/N: Inspired by basically the first thunderstorm of the season for my area, which passed overhead last night.**

**Apologies if this is horrible/dry/repetitive/horrendously OOC, I can count the number of fics I've written on one hand and this is the first I've ever had the guts to post anywhere.**

**Sorry also if it got a bit... all over the place at the end, It's nearly 1:30AM here and I may have been starting to ramble...**  
**Teen rating for last few paragraphs, I guess?**

**can I actually just apologize for this whole fic? asfdkg;fgsfd**

***praying that this is the proper way to make Author's Notes***

* * *

Summer was the first season to be Created, and it was Gabriel's favorite. It reminded him of home, of Heaven; of the ever-present warmth of his Father's brightest Star.

Once, Lucifer had come to him with a broad grin on his face, and he had taken Gabriel's hand in his own as he had done so many times before. "Brother," the older angel had said, "Our Father has blessed me with one of His most glorious gifts. Would you like to see it?" Gabriel looked up at him, golden eyes alight with curiosity. He nodded his head eagerly, a smile rivaling that of his brother's spreading across his features. He squeezed the hand that held his own in affirmation, and then they were gone.

They did this often; the two of them, flying down to Earth to witness the miracle of their Father's glory unfold. It would be finished soon, they had heard; God had been dedicating nearly all of his time to adding the final touches. As His Work neared completion, He had begun to bestow upon His angels the most precious of gifts—individual parts and pieces of Creation, given to them and only them to protect and preserve. The gifts were all specific entities: the oceans, the flowers, a certain day of the seven it would take Him to complete His greatest miracle, and yet the seemingly infinite number of things on their Father's blessed Earth assured that each of His Children would receive a unique part of it. Gabriel had been given the Moon; Lucifer, among other things, had been given the Sun.

Night was upon the area on which they now stood, and it took them a moment to adjust from the blinding and unwavering Holy Light they were used to. The moon was vieled by ominous clouds that were nearly green, just enough light streaming through for them to see by, and they found that they were in the middle of an endless field. The grass surrounding them was long and impossibly soft; it was the kind that tickled and pressed feather-light kisses to wandering limbs, with blades so endless you could easily lose yourself in their length, the kind that caught you if you fell, cradling you gently until you reached the ground. Surrounding them was a warmth so thick it was nearly tangible, stuck in the perfect spot between unnoticeable and overwhelming, carried on a breeze that whispered sweet nothings against their skin. It was summertime here, Gabriel realized, and he smiled to himself.

He watched in fascinated silence as his brother's hand moved against the grass. In response to the gesture, a bolt of solid light shot above them, giving off a radiance so brilliant it was as if the whole of Heaven itself was trying to break through. The sudden burst cast false shadows upon Gabriel's face and the young archangel watched in wide-eyed awe as the sparks danced across the horizon before shuddering out just as quickly as they had come.

And then, the _noise_.

The loudest sound in all Creation wrenched itself from the sky and tore through the clouds like the crack of a whip. A frightened squeak escaped Gabriel's lips and his small hands clenched tight around his brother's robes. It was soft against his suddenly tear-reddened cheeks and he buried himself in it, the fabric muffling his tearful cries and hiding him from the monstrous roar.

Lucifer was quick to shush away his brother's fear. "Hush, little brother. No need to be frightened. I'll keep you safe," he said with a soft smile and a kiss to Gabriel's honey-gold hair, "I promise."

Silence lingered for a moment until Gabriel, having quieted in the lull of his brother's voice, nodded slowly and began to untangle his fists from their death-grip on his sleeve. There was another flash, one that was much less blinding and farther away than before, with the accompanying echo sounding more like a small stone rolling down a hill instead of the almighty explosion that had come after the first. Still, he reflexively flinched at it. Feeling his brother's slight tremor, Lucifer moved to comfort him again.

"Our Father calls it 'lightning', and the echo is called 'thunder'," he explained, pausing to allow the light and sound to punctuate his words. "He has given them to me, and has made me their patron." He let out a contented breath as another bolt shot loose. "Isn't it beautiful, Gabriel?" The question was whispered with such a reverence that Gabriel was almost hesitant to answer, as if even the most adamant of agreements would come nowhere near the level of awe it demanded, and would be so unworthy of its glory as to be found insulting by his brother and the Father who had brought the Light into existence.

Indeed, he had found sight to be truly stunning. He sniffled and wiped a hand across his eyes. "It's almost as bright as you, Brother. Can you show it to me again?"

xxxx

Thousands of years later, in a sick twist of fate, they would once again find themselves on that exact spot, in what was now Muncie, Indiana—a place that no longer held the wild whispering grasses of their Beginning but was instead smothered by the charred destruction of an End. If he could have spared enough of his concentration to do it, Gabriel would've laughed at the bitter irony.

One of them was going to die here.

He refused to kill his brother—_can't or won't_, the older Winchester had asked him, and he had known which was the truth—because he'd spent millennia running from his family, from his brothers and sisters, and through all that he found he couldn't imagine life with the permanent loss of the one brother that stood before him. Lucifer, God's brightest and most radiant Star, was staring him down with a face marked by the scars of an imperfect shell and the crimson blood of freshly-murdered gods.

Here, in the ballroom of a brightly-colored hotel, Gabriel would die in a blaze of valiance and the courage to finally stand up and do what was right.

Except that was a lie.

He would go out looking as if he had done his best to protect the miracle their absent Father had cherished so dearly. Another lie. He could have done more, _should have_ had the conviction to murder his brother but he wouldn't, he couldn't and yet he _would not run away from this_. One of them was going to die, and it had to be him. He would not kill the Morningstar, and he would not let himself walk out of here alive with nothing but the ashes of Lucifer's once-brilliant Grace burned onto the floor. He understood now, as he looked Death and his brother in the face, why their Father had given them the gifts that He had. The Sun, even in isolation, makes its own light, and in turn illuminates everything it touches; the Moon alone is dull and cold, shrouded in darkness unless graced by another's luminance.

The Moon cannot glow without the light of the Sun to shine upon it.

If the moon hung a bit less brightly in the night sky from then on, no one noticed.

No one, except for the Sun.


End file.
